I realize the headline violates our rule against personal attacks. But I just have to make an exception in the case of Mr. Irons, who has achieved a level of asininity rare even for a movie star making comments on global issues.

Before we delve into the really asinine stuff, let me highlight one area of agreement:

In a film on the website 1billionhungry.org, Irons declares: “People around the world suffer hunger — 1 billion. Now that’s bad, worse than bad, that’s crazy! We’ve got to get mad. I want you to get mad. I want you to get up right now, stick your head out of the window and yell, ‘I’m mad as hell’.”

Okay, setting aside the very tired reference to a 35-year-old movie (that he wasn’t even in), I agree that we should be appalled about the number of hungry people in the world. And I am completely behind programs aimed at getting food to the hungry, or better yet, putting food-production capability into the hands of the hungry. Then we get this:

Irons, who owns seven houses, including a pink castle in Co Cork, Ireland, believes a new economic vision is needed in the wake of the global financial crisis. “We are facing an economic revolution,” he said. “I don’t think things can ever be the same again. The next generation will have to think laterally and find ways to cope with this.”

Here’s some lateral thinking. Jeremy, I will listen to what you have to say about the need for an economic revolution after you go sell six of your seven houses and give the proceeds to feed the hungry. That would prove that you’re serious about revolution, and not just some reeking hypocrite who thinks it’s okay to personally benefit from a system that you condemn because you’re an “artist.”

But it gets much worse.

“One always returns to the fact that there are just too many of us, the population continues to rise and it’s unsustainable,” he said in an interview with The Sunday Times. “I think we have to find ways where we’re not having to scrap our effluent junk and are a really sustainable planet.”

Natural systems of selfregulation may stop population growth, he said: “I suspect there’ll be a very big outbreak of something because the world always takes care of itself.”

The 61-year-old actor went on to speculate that either disease or war, “probably disease”, could become nature’s way of halving the population.

Have you ever noticed how the people who call for there to be “less of us” never seem to think that they are part of the problem? If there are too many people on the planet, what are you doing here still taking up space and using resources?

Anyhow, it seems that Irons is worried that a billion people are hungry, but he nods approvingly at scenarios wherein more than three billion people get wiped out by disease or natural disaster. Anyone who thinks that having half the population of the planet die is a “solution” to anything is a moral cretin of unspeakable proportions. However, I doubt that he actually believes this. He just hasn’t thought through what he’s saying.

So I’ll stick with with my initial diagnosis: nitwit.